Ex-Obama adviser Van Jones calls Biden’s ‘massive cover-up’ a ‘crime against this republic’

Democratic luminary Van Jones excoriated top aides and allies around former President Joe Biden who allegedly helped cover up the octogenarian’s condition as a “crime against this republic.”

Jones admitted that he was surprised by the degree of Biden’s decline and vented his outrage at the lengths Biden’s allies went to conceal it, as described in the upcoming book, “Original Sin” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson.

“I was shocked,” Jones told CNN’s “State of the Union” about the 46th president’s decline. “I love Joe Biden. I got a chance to work with him when I was part of the Obama administration. I loved him more every day. I was shocked to see his condition when he came out, and so was the world.”

The Democratic pundit, who previously worked as a special adviser for green jobs in the Obama administration, harked back to his despondent reaction to Biden’s fumbling debate performance against President Trump last June.

“That wasn’t the first time he was in that condition,” Jones added. “The book makes it very, very clear there are people who knew and said nothing. And that is a crime against this republic. I think the Democrats are going to pay for a long time for being a part of what is now being revealed to be a massive cover-up.”

Heading into the debate, Jones had publicly acknowledged concerns about Biden’s mental acuity and warned the verbal bout could be a “game over” for the 46th president.

Jones later became emotional after Biden appeared weak onstage opposite Trump and repeatedly seemed to lose his train of thought. Jones’ voice cracked up on television in the post-debate analysis.

On Sunday, Jones said that Dems need to do deeper soul-searching and confront hard truths about why they lost in 2024. He compared current conditions to the Dems’ defeat in 2004.

“It took 3.5 years before Barack Obama emerged with a message. What did we do in the meantime?” Jones said about former President George W. Bush’s 2004 victory. ” We looked inside. Donors got reorganized.”

“There was a deep internal reflection,” he went on. “Before we get out here and start trying to tell people why they should like us, we need to look in the mirror, reorganize ourselves, get bad people and bad ideas out of the way, and then we will be able to come forward in the midterm.

“Right now, we need to apologize to the American people that we were part of something that wasn’t on the up and up.”

Famed Democratic strategist David Axelrod, one of the top architects of former President Barack Obama’s 2008 win, had been one of the few prominent voices on the left raising concerns about Biden at the time.

Tapper asked Axelrod about Biden’s recent insistence on ABC’s “The View” that he would’ve won a rematch against Trump if he stayed in the race. Axelrod quickly rejected that.

“I think that’s preposterous,” Axelrod countered. “He’s being told that by Mike Donilon, his top political aide. I think [Donilon] is just so tied to Biden emotionally that he could not accept the truth.

“The analytics before the debate within the Democratic Party, within both the campaign and outside the campaign, showed him with less than a 5% chance of winning,” he added. ” Had he run, Democrats would have lost at least three more Senate seats, probably would have lost some more states.”